28 Days Later… A Review

[[image:28dl00.jpg:Jim guesses he shouldn’t have farted that loudly:center:0]]I never fail to wince watching Danny Boyle’s movies. So far I’ve seen a couple. I winced when watching Trainspotting. I winced watching Shallow Grave. (I’ve never seen Pillow Book or A Life Less Ordinary so I can’t comment on those.) And certainly there are many wince-inducing scenes in 28 Days Later. The story begins when members of an animal liberating group attempt to release a chimpanzee from a lab. A lab technician catches them in the act, implores them not to release the animal. It’s infected, he says. With what, they ask. Rage. Despite the lab tech’s pleas, they uncage the chimp, whose first act was to bite its liberator. The person bitten starts convulsing with her pupils turning blood red and violently attacks her companions in the process throwing up a mixture of blood and vomit onto them. Then everyone starts […]

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Ruminations of Superman Returns

[[image:supes00.jpg:Superman Returns:center:0]]I went in to watch Superman Returns with high expectations and I got what I deserved, I guess. It was quite a decent movie, but it isn’t as epic as i thought it would be. First the non-spoilerific thoughts: [[image:supes02.jpg:Transorbital Rescue:left:0]]The stills I saw prior to seeing this movie did not do justice to Brandon Routh. He doesn’t only make a terrific Superman, but he does a fantastic iteration of Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent. The VFX of Superman flying are perfect, and make us believe a man can fly much more than Superman the Movie. Any scene with him flying for any reason is visually satisfying. There could be a scene of him trying to pick his teeth while floating and it would look great I believe. The space shuttle and Boeing 777 simultaneous rescue is everything I wanted to see in a Superman movie. [[image:supes03.jpg:Keyser Luthor:right:0]]Lots of people […]

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Cyclops, Shortchanged

Last Tuesday, I finally saw X-Men The Last Stand. But I’m not going to do a full review on the movie itself. The following two paragraph will summarize what I thought about it. Despite the misgivings of having Brett Ratner directing the third X-Men movie, and reports of behind the scene shenanigans that caused Bryan Singer to leave in the first place, I really enjoyed The Last Stand. Sure there were some plot holes and unbalanced screen time for characters, but they delivered what they promised: super-powered mutants beating the crap out of each other in creative ways onscreen. And I’m sure if the writers and director were given ample time without any studio politics involved, they would have given us something much more glorious than what we got. In any case, I because of the amount of details in this movie: a totally spot on Beast with amazing acrobatic […]

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V For Verisimilitude

I saw V for Vendetta on Monday. Therefore I shall write about it here. With spoilers. You have been warned. I only read the comic for the first time last year, so I never really connected with the background of the millieux presented by Alan Moore in the book. I understand why there was a need to alter it in the movie, giving it a more up to date topical setting and tying it with current events. A Neccessary Reflection of The Here And Now [[image:v00.jpg:Vox Populi:right:0]]As as example of what I’m talking about, the movie talks about the Norsefire regime in the UK rising into power because of the release of the St. Mary’s Virus as a terrorist attack in England killing 80,000 souls. Soon after the supposed terrorists were captured, tried and executed. The conservatives played upon the fear of the people and became the ruling party, thus […]

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A Skull Island Travelogue – A Kong Review

[[image:kong.jpg:Kong is King:center:0]]Last night we finally saw Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong. Upon reading initial articles that said that the movie was too long and were boring during the beginning and had pointless scenes aboard the Venture part of the movie, I thought “I’ll take whatever you dish out.” I would enjoy what I could and get it over with. To my surprise, the movie did not bore me to tears at all. Sure there were the trademark lingering close up shots of actors’ (and one giant CG alpha male silverback’s) faces that inundated Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I did not think there were any pointless and unengaging scenes in the movies. Everything added to the storyline, and the overall atmosphere of the movie. To me everything worked. Of course to a SF and fantasy fan like myself the high point of the movie was without […]

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Mini Reviews: Pulp, Supers and Lemurs

So the other day I borrowed some DVDs from [[popup:saberfight.jpg:Awie:Makashi? I think not.:inline:1]]. Why didn’t I buy them? Cause I’m a cheapskate. Here are three movies I saw over the last couple of days and some of my thoughts on it. I saw the first movie in the cinema… twice. I missed the second and the third. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Many elements from ’30s and ’40s pulp serials can be found here, and are a joy to watch. How can you not love blatant references from machinations of a villian straight off Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons, to 1933’s King Kong, with the wreck of the Venture with Kong’s cage very visible. Even Totenkopf’s hideaway is a Skull Island of sorts. Dex’s ray gun. The robot designs. The mobile airstrip (like classic SHIELD Helicarriers). The giant rocketship. Sky Captain’s Flying Legion is a homage to the Blackhawks […]

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Into the Wardrobe: A Narnia Review

So I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe last Friday, right after Friday prayers at GSC 1 Utama. I wasn’t disappointed. It was exactly as I expected it. I expected the story to be somewhat thin because the book is in fact thin compared to the other fantasy series written by author C.S. Lewis’s contemporary and peer (J. R. R. Tolkien if you don’t know). Narnia in the entire first book wasn’t quite fleshed out as Middle Earth was in the first 2 chapters of Fellowship of the Ring. I was concerned that people who aren’t familiar with Narnia would think that the ending is a copout. And judging from the reaction of a lot of people sitting around me a couple of days ago, they thought it was a copout. I prefer Voyage of the Dawn Treader, anyways. Seafaring adventures r0xx0rs, yo. 😉 […]

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Batman Begins – A Review

It took more than 10 years, but I have a new best feature length Batman movie to replace my old one. Among the new generation of Batman movies (by new I mean, post-Adam West) I caught the first one on video, saw the second twice in the movie theater, raised my eyebrow at the third once on the big screen, and saw the spectacular train wreck that was the fourth on TV, and even then I wasn’t too eager to watch it through to the end. So I was very cautious approaching Batman Begins earlier today. And I left the theater more than 2 hours later very, very satisfied with Christopher Nolan’s final product. Spoilers shall thrive beyond this point. The movie deals with the origin of Batman. We not only see the formulaic parts of it, the parts of the Batman myth everyone knows. An Epic Tale I saw […]

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Juggernauts in the back

Revenge Of The Sith Review… Sort Of…

After having been released for exactly a week, I finally saw Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith today. Well, not me alone, I was accompanied by my cohort, Irfan! Yes, true believers. There was a 2 years 8 month old child today in the theatre watching a movie that was rated PG-13 by the MPAA, but “U” by some sleepy guy in a drab office in charge of rating English movies in Malaysia. Bite me, you over-sensitive, politically correct whiners! So, I guess it’s time of me to review this movie. Before you let out another collective “not- another- internet- review- of- ROTS” sigh, I am very much aware that almost every guy with a blog and their one-legged puppy has reviewed ROTS this past week when I was in Sitiawan, so I’m not going to review ROTS. Instead, I will review the experience of watching Irfan […]

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